Ground Zero(12)

And if it fell down all the way …

“Hurry!” Brandon told the two men. “We have to get them out!”

The bankers were kicking at the drywall as hard and fast as they could, but they were already panting hard and sweating through their dress shirts. The smoke was getting worse too. Brandon coughed and looked around frantically. He had to do something. The help he’d brought wasn’t enough, and they didn’t have time to wait for building security or firemen.

Firemen, Brandon thought, and he had a sudden inspiration. He ran back out into the hall. There—the fire hose box! Brandon didn’t want the hose curled up inside it. He wanted what was in front of the hose, right behind the glass.

A fire ax!

The instructions on the window said IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS. Well, thought Brandon, if ever there was an emergency, this is it. He yanked the fire extinguisher from its cradle and used the heavy thing like a battering ram.

Krissh!

The glass shattered, and Brandon cleared out the rest of the shards enough to reach inside. He grazed his wrist on a piece of glass and pulled his arm away with a hiss, but he’d be all right. He’d had worse injuries wiping out on his skateboard.

The important thing was, he had the ax.

Brandon ran back to the bathroom, where the two bankers were standing bent over, their hands on their knees. They were out of breath, and the smoke was even thicker than before.

“Look out!” Brandon cried. Shaking from panic and fear, Brandon lifted the big ax over his head and swung it down hard on the ragged break in the drywall.

Whack!

The ax knocked off a chunk of Sheetrock, but Brandon didn’t hit it square on. The ax kicked away from the wall and slammed into the floor below the hole—chank!—shattering the bathroom’s tiles.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” one of the bankers said, taking the ax from Brandon. “Good job, kid, but I got it from here.”

Brandon stood back as the man swung the ax at the wall. He was stronger, and his aim was better. In less than a minute, he had opened up a hole big enough for Marni to squeeze through. When she could stand again, she wrapped Brandon in an I-can’t-believe-we’re-alive hug. Ordinarily, Brandon would have felt funny hugging a stranger, but now he hugged her back with relief.

Mike and Shavinder were able to help Stephen get through the hole next. He was still having trouble breathing, and Marni went to get him water. Finally Mike and Shavinder squeezed through the hole, and then everyone was out of the horrible elevator.

Shavinder gave Brandon a tight hug. “You saved us, Brandon,” he said.

Brandon pointed to the men from the bank. “They did the work.”

The banker with the ax wiped the sweat from his brow and smiled. “I guess chopping all that wood as a kid back in Wisconsin paid off,” he said.

Marni tried her cell phone again, and this time she got a signal. She stepped to the corner of the bathroom with a finger to one ear and her phone to the other.

“Does anyone know what happened?” Shavinder asked the bankers.

“Felt like an earthquake to me,” one of them replied.

“Yes, yes, I’m all right!” Marni told someone on the phone. “The signal’s bad, hon, I can’t … Yes, we were trapped in an elevator, but …” She was quiet for a moment. “Oh my God,” she said. She turned to face the rest of them. “My husband says an airplane hit the building. A passenger jet. It’s all over the news!”

“My God,” Stephen said. “That must be why the building tilted! We were in the elevator when the plane hit.”

A plane? Hit the building? Brandon felt a jolt go through him. That didn’t make sense. How could you fly a plane into one of the Twin Towers by accident? They were the biggest, tallest buildings in the city, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. No pilot in his right mind would—

Screeeeech!

Brandon heard the sound of metal grinding against metal, and he flinched. He and the others glanced back at the hole just in time to see the elevator car plummet down the shaft.

Nobody moved, and nobody spoke. Everyone was waiting and listening for the elevator car to hit bottom, but the crash never came.

Or maybe it was just so far down they couldn’t hear it.

Brandon exhaled and slumped forward. Mike cursed underneath his breath, and Stephen let out a single sob. They had come that close to plummeting to their deaths.

“Hon? I’ll call you back when I get out,” Marni said into her phone, and flipped it closed.

In a daze, Brandon followed everyone out of the bathroom. The two bankers went back to their office, and the elevator survivors stood in a huddle.

“The plane must have hit somewhere high up,” Mike said quietly. “Cut through the elevator cables.”

“My dad!” Brandon said suddenly. “He’s in Windows on the World! What if the plane hit the 107th floor?” He exchanged a frantic glance with Shavinder.

Stephen’s eyes searched the ceiling. “My company is spread out over five floors. What if it hit one of those?”

Marni put a hand to her mouth. “My company covers eight floors, right above us. And there were half a dozen people at work already this morning!”

“I’m sure they’re all right,” Mike said.

But there was no way he could know that, Brandon thought. There was no way any of them could know what floor the plane had hit.